


in the shadow of your heart

by karnsteins



Category: The Outsiders - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Relationships, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:08:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28683798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karnsteins/pseuds/karnsteins
Summary: being soulmates isn't everything it's cracked up to be when you're aware of every previous life at some point, and it's really not all it's cracked up to be when you're aware that your soulmate doesn't always pick you. ponyboy curtis knows this first hand.
Relationships: Ponyboy Curtis/Dallas Winston
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	in the shadow of your heart

i.

in this life he is blonde, with eyes that are cold. in this life, you watch him turn, raise the gun and you think that of course he wanted this, of course he wanted to die. you watch the bullets riddle his body and you tell this story over and over again. 

you tell it not knowing that as much as you tried to rationalize his death, as much as you try to tell yourself that maybe he deserved it because of what he'd done, you hate it. you hate it, you hate that you dream of him dying and it takes you almost twenty years to admit to yourself that you loved him, and you couldn't stand living in a world bereft of his coldness, his violence, and that you could have done something, done anything and you would have felt better about his death.

but you didn't. 

you go on living. 

ii.

in this life, he has brown hair and brown eyes and this time he doesn't fall in front of you, dead without a word. you're still sobbing, still crying but this time it hurts even more when he's on his belly, crawling to you, saying your name. he chokes on your name, his hands reach out to you and you're screaming for him, you want him to live, need him to live. 

he doesn't, and he dies with your name on his lips and your body breaks in that moment, lets you fall down too as if it hopes his body will be there to catch yours too. 

it isn't there. he dies, you are sick and once again, you're telling his story, his death to others. this time, you realize you love him after he's dead but this time you're sixteen and you're at his grave, and you hate it. this time, you remember the life before, and you wish that you could have known sooner, that you can change this. 

iii.

in this life, you love him as soon as you meet him. you're a child and you think you know what love means before you meet him but that's a lie. you know what love really means when this kid sneers at you and says that you can come along with him even if steve doesn't want you to. in this life, you know that you will do absolutely anything for him, and you know that the dreams you have where he dies, they're prophetic. they'll come true, he'll die whether he's blonde or brown haired, blue eyed or brown eyed. 

you don't want him to die. you also know that you can't tell him that you love him; you see how he treats johnny, you see that he ruffles his hair and doesn't belt him in the face. he shoves you, slaps you sometimes, and you wish he'd give to you what he gives for johnny. 

it doesn't matter, anyway. he doesn't die this time, you're the one who shoves him out of the way. you're the one who takes the bullets, who's body finally falls instead, and you die in his arms knowing that you'd do it again and again, so he can live beyond seventeen, he can finally be more, do more that no more obituaries will be written about him as a hood. 

iv. 

in the fourth life, you and he never meet. you live all your life in tulsa, and you dream of him, his face above yours, as you die in his arms. you dream of the way it felt to see him look at you, you dream of what it was like to save him, over and over again. you marry no one, and you find yourself happy, that even if neither of you meet each other, he lives past seventeen. 

v. 

you don't live past thirteen years old. you and your parents die together, in the car. you've never even understood the pull you've had to him, and there's nothing to be done.

vi.

in the sixth life, he has brown hair, and it is 1985. he has climbed into your window in tulsa, and you wrap your arms around him and he kisses you in a way that is hungry, wolvish. it is not the romance in books or movies, it is ravenous, and you meet it all the same. you meet like this constantly, him climbing in your window, you meeting him in the library, hands finding each other, bodies making a solid line with each other in the darkness, his teeth finding a groove in your skin and your fingers gripping his hair. 

you've never been loved back by him before. you hate it when you're the one who dies this time, three years later in a hospital bed, frail and unable to see him. you thought you would have more time with him, more time asking his opinions on books, more time sharing cigarettes, more time trying to express all things you hadn't before. 

vii. 

in the seventh life, he begins to suspect. you see it in the way he looks at you, eyes ice cold again, that he thinks something is wrong, that he's seen you before, loved you before. 

you say nothing, only wait for the day you turn fourteen, counting down the time you have with your parents, with him. 

in this life, he doesn't ask to go to the movies with you and johnny. he goes alone. in this one, he marries cherry because of a one night stand and you drift apart. 

you meet him again when he's thirty-six, you're thirty-three, in a bar. he doesn't seem to be happy alone, and he doesn't seem to care about the fact that you're drinking alone. you tell yourself that you shouldn't do what you want here, that you should tell him to go back to what he's running from but you don't, you miss him in a way that you wish you had never understood before. 

you almost wish he had never loved you back. being without it was simpler, it made everything so much easier to bear, and when his lips meet yours, you feel like everything is the way it should be again. 

it is 1984, and you see him again and again in motels at rodeos at your own home, and you're his secret and he's yours and once again, you die in 1988 not of a disease but of a stranger, desperate to rob the little store you're in. you die because his gun goes off by accident, the store is too far away from the hospital, and the last thing you think is that you hope to see him again, please, please. 

viii. 

three lives go on without seeing him again. you're born in different places, different times, always missing him. 

four more go on where you keep meeting each other at the wrong time: when johnny dies and you're the first responder and he dies in your arms; when your daughter has just died and you don't know how deep your grief goes and you brush past him at a convenience store, intent on being drunk; when he's still dealing with sylvia's death and a toddler that he doesn't know how to handle and you're already married to someone else; when you lose your parents, darry's unable to take you in and you leave with a distant aunt five minutes before dallas ever meets him, never to return to tulsa again.

ix. 

in sixteen lives, you've never run away from home like this with him. you've never simply climbed into his car after soda's funeral and gone away with him, into the sunset, away from grief and pain and anger. you've never had to help bury soda, you've never had to sift through the grief of losing the one person you always thought was a guarantee even if you never could verbalize how you knew, and the thing is, it's the best decision you've ever made. dallas doesn't push you, he doesn't make you do anything except help him get enough money for gas. you and he live in and out of motel rooms, you find each other's bodies in the dark, and even if he's never said i love you in any life that you have together, you tell him yourself over and over again in the dark. he bites you for the love you give him, and it is exhilarating, it is what keeps you alive. 

x. 

(you don't want to say it outloud: that you only have so many lives with him. something in your soul tells you this, that your lives with him are numbered in a way that isn't with others. you think you know exactly who he really is destined for in an innumerable, eternal spiral of a love you can't fathom, the secret heavy and upsetting on your tongue. you don't want to hate johnny for it. what they have is different than what you have with dallas, yet the more you notice it, the more you can feel even cherry valence with her own connection that feels like so much more, the more you think that eventually, you'll come to resent them. you don't want to share, you don't want to have to be afraid that the next life will be the last, that he'll eventually tire of you. you want to hold on tighter, you want to beg for him in a way that you've never begged for your parents because at least they'll always be there. dallas won't be.)

xi.

as if to curse you, the seventeenth life has you choking on flowers when you are fourteen years old out of jealousy. you can't articulate who you are more jealous of, only that you keep your silence and eventually, you become more flower than flesh and blood. you become the earth, keeping your secret with you, and at least, you make a beautiful bloom.

xii.

the eighteen life, you make the decision to shove johnny out of the church first. the beam falls on you, and your back doesn't break, your skull does. in the nineteenth, you're the one who stabs bob instead of johnny, and dallas can't save you when the beam falls on your back. you die in the hospital, and you know that the instant you do, he will snap, run into the street to be shot at by the police. you beg for more time.

xiii. 

"do you dream about them?" dallas' voice is quiet, hand in your hair. you're fifty-two years old, with grey streaks in your hair, and dallas' hair is brown this time, and so are his eyes when he looks at you from across the pillow. he's blurry; he must've taken the glasses off of your face. 

"dream about what?" you ask. you have lots of dreams, and in the moment, there's no way he's asking what you think he is. "you? course i do, dal." 

he's not stupid. you've been together since you were fourteen and he was seventeen, when you knew that in this life you had to be with him even if you didn't know why until you were twenty. he shifts in bed, drags you closer. your foreheads touch, cool in the house. "not like this. in other ways, places." 

there's more to that, that he doesn't say, doesn't need to say. your hand goes up to caress his cheek. he's never voiced this before, and there's so much you've carried all these years, knowing when he didn't. you don't know how to say it, so you nod your head. you don't know how to put that burden at his feet, don't know where to begin asking him how he knows. 

he kisses you different: sweeter, softer, and you want to know what he's thinking in that moment. you want to know if he's clinging as hard as you are to more, if he's aware that he's intertwined with others, if he even wants to be. 

you should ask. you want to ask. you're _afraid_ to ask. 

it's better in the moment to say, "yes. every night." there are so many more words you could add to it that you find you are unable to say. 

he kisses you again, and you set your words away for another time. you kiss him back, over and over again, and in the morning, he seems to have forgotten. still, though, he holds you as tight as before, and you slot your hands together as tightly as you can, to tether him to you, afraid of what lies in his own dreams.

xiv.

does it make you a coward, being afraid to know? does it make you foolish? you don't know. not anymore.

xv. 

more than anything, you have to live with this: the idea that one day you will lose him. that one day, you will run out of lives no matter how many more you wish for, that you will one day remember more lives without him than more lives with him. 

your fingers bury themselves in his arm, and you bury your head against his neck. you want to offer up anything, everything in the universe to make sure that that day never comes, that he will choose you as many times as you choose him.

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by [25 lives](https://alighthouseofwords.tumblr.com/post/47941173293/25-lives-by-tongari) and my general need for soulmate angst. comments, kudos, holler at me over at tumblr @madeleinepryor.


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